Çogunluk

Çogunluk ( Majority ) is one of the movies that bring out the depressing cultural phenomenon which resides mostly the developing countries' cultures, as well as the majorities of the metropolitan western cities.

Though the movie tells about a boy,( a grown up one ) with a dominant father and an unhappy mother, it surely can be considered as a whole nightmare no one would like to participate in. The transition from the eastern cultures to a western one with no effort and morals is told perfectly.

Seren Yüce is a successful director with a smooth story telling and using acts and spaces to get into your mind. Settar Tanriogen and Nihal G. Koldas fits as the father & the mother so that you cannot even think they act. On the other hand Bartu Küçükçaglayan as the boy needs some more experience to bring out the anger of a late teenager, but still does fine.

The sets, cars, houses, the talks, the ideas are what the majority really live in. You cannot turn your back to the reality, and "Çogunluk" tells you how the majority suffers from the transition.

This Turkish film is the honest portrayal of a lost generation which has to depend almost entirely on the parents. A lot of nice things have been written about this film's lead character but the truth is that he is a complete misfit. Hanging out with friends at Malls seems to be his only hobby. By making use of these two personality traits, Seren Yuce shows the differences between rich and poor in modern Turkey. However, one major trouble with this film is that its lead actor utterly fails to convey notions of hardships. Although his girl friend is from a minority community. It doesn't shock viewers to discover that she wouldn't be accepted by his parents. In the past director Seren Yuce worked with established Turkish directors such as Faith Akin and Yesim Ustaoglu. Majority is the first film by this director which has won some key awards at different important film festivals for itself as well as its protagonists.

The characters in this film annoyed me greatly. Their black and white line of thinking included religion/race, school (not needed) versus army (useful), owners versus workers, men versus women, etcetera. I may safely assume that this annoyance was intentional, hence a compliment to the film makers. In other words, a job well done.

I don't think this situation is typically Turkish, and could easily be moved to other countries (except The Netherlands);-)) of course).

The only problem that I am stuck with, is that the title (Majority) cannot be explained from the contents. Neither contained the announcement any clues. But that is only a minor issue, and not demeaning for the end result we saw on screen.

Mertkan is a twenty something, moderately overweight young man in Turkey, and has to deal with his boring life (which consists mainly of hanging out with friends at shopping malls) and his job working for his strict, domineering father, who runs a small construction company in Istanbul. He has a break with routine when he is involved with a Kurdish girl named Gul (the pretty Esme Madra, the best thing in the film) he met in a fast food restaurant. When his family learns of this relationship, they are naturally quite opposed to it.

Filmed with good production values, the main interest of this movie to me is that it shows life in an urban middle class milieu in Turkey. The main problem with it is that most of the characters are so unpleasant, especially the father and the son. The only exception is the Kurdish girl, but the movie never focus on her voice, nor we understand why she would be attracted to him.

Since Turkey is supposedly a fairly conservative country, I was surprised this movie includes a sexual scene, not particularly explicit for Western standards, but it does involve female frontal nudity.

Turkish cinema produces fine films and this is one of them.It shows a patriarchal family structure in which all members are alienated and no real communication exists.They exchange messages but the lines of the father cannot be crossed no matter how this makes the other members unhappy.Father is violent corrupt disrespectful and racist as we see from different manifestations of the film.Mother seems to understand her predicament but she is reluctant to take any action and accepts her fate.Son has an opportunity that is given to him via his relationship with the Kurdish girl to see his life from a different perspective but he don't have the education the support from friends and family and he is a coward.So in the end the abused son becomes the abuser towards the workers because he don't know nothing else to do, he reproduces his father.Th e irony on the socio-political level comes from the emancipatory call that comes from the Kurdish girl (the book that later is thrown away)to the modest but well off Turkish family.In other words a region which is backward economically socially compared to the rest of turkey.Maybe this is a hint that the Turkish government play a role for that situation.Excellent performances from all the actors.